


Ascent

by WahlBuilder



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Acrobatics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 21:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14090241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Max reclaims a part of his past as Jacob watches it anxiously.





	Ascent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [actualkoschei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualkoschei/gifts).



Jacob is watching the crane like he’d watch a mark. Ready to spring at any moment, ready to end it at any moment.

Even though he has checked the rigging probably a dozen times already now, even though Lewis has checked it half a dozen times over and Jacob would trust Lewis with Max’s life any day, Jacob can’t stop flexing his left arm under the quilt he’s hugging to his chest, even though there’s no blade on it.

He tries not to think of the ribbon rigged to the boom of the crane as a noose.

They are as ready as they can be.

Jacob doesn’t feel ready—and he can sympathise with the quiet, rigid look on Lewis who’s leaning on the crane deceptively casually, his head tilted up and his gaze fixed on the fabric. His fingers playing with his switchblade incessantly, like he wishes nothing more than to cut the ribbon.

Lewis never fidgets.

Lewis fears heights.

Lewis watched Max fall, once.

During the weeks preceding this cold, cold morning, Jacob saw Lewis outside the Alhambra, chain-smoking in the backyard with his gaze on some spot in the distance.

It meant that Max was practicing.

Every night after the evening performance, when lights and sounds died out and the city settled for its unrestful sleep. Max wrapped himself in silks and ascended. Jacob watched him stumble—and how could one stumble in the air?—and tumble down only to catch himself at the last moment when Jacob’s stomach lurched. And he started the climb again. And fell, and started over, again, again, again.

Jacob forced himself to stay put, froze in the gallery or down below in the darkness of the empty seats.

Watched Max tumble down, wipe sweat and angry tears off his face, and then start again. Again. Again.

Jacob never suffered vertigo from heights in his life, but, watching the practice, watching the man he loves drop and drop, his flexibility and strength the only things standing—hanging—between him and an injury or worse… It made Jacob break into cold sweat and his heart stop.

It was also intensely beautiful.

They are as ready as they can be.

The crane fixed (bless Freddie for helping them with necessary permissions to bring it to Leicester Square), the Rooks and the Blighters scattered over the square, weather reports checked and rechecked, medics waiting, concealed from Max’s eye.

The city is waking up. Jacob shivers in the morning chill, wonders whether he should talk Max out of it due to the chill… He meets Lewis’s gaze, and Lewis makes the briefest of headshakes.

Let Max have this.

So Jacob tightens the bundle of the quilt in his hands and stays still. Like during the nightly tears and falls of the previous weeks.

Let the Flying Man take to the air again.

A small throng of passers-by is slowly gathering, teenagers, college kids, business people, pub crawlers, pointing at the crimson fabric, at the crane, wondering, no doubt, at the uniformed crimson and green-yellow men and women. The Blighters nod or shake heads or resolve to monosyllabic answers, united in their nervous waiting.

Some of them call Max ‘Dad’ by accident from time to time. It always makes him smile.

The murmurs die out, silence washing over the square like a wave, and Jacob tenses.

The crowd to his left parts, letting a figure to the crimson fabric.

Max is wearing only short black trousers, his ankles, his torso and arms bare. His face bare, too, makeup not concealing but not highlighting the scars either. The lines of the tattoo that covers his whole body from pale throat to the quick narrow wrists and to quick narrow feet is like warpaint, standing out. His victories and his failures, his struggle to claim and forge and temper his own body on display.

He steps to the ribbon, his face is pale, and for a few beats he’s simply standing there, holding onto the crimson with his eyes closed.

Then he looks up at Jacob.

Jacob meets his gaze and finds emerald flame in them.

He wants, needs to kiss Max in this moment, but he stays on the stone ledge. Watching.

The corner of Max’s mouth twitches. Then he stretches his arms up, the silks framing his long wiry form. 

And then, he twists himself up.

Jacob forgets to breathe.

The city feels like it forgets to breathe, too.

There is no music: the unempty silence is awash with distant sounds of life as a man plays gravity like his instrument, the ribbons his strings, his body the bow.

He twists and stretches, every movement savoured, the geometric lines of his tattoo accentuating the play of muscles under the skin. He wraps the crimson about himself and drops, and climbs again, higher and higher, turning upside down, stretching horizontally, higher and higher. Higher and higher. In stubborn defiance to the steel claws of gravity, to the blood and pain of his past.

The routine doesn’t last more than five minutes, with one last drop from the whole thirty feet looking like it will never stop, like the earth will never claim this man again. And then his feet are on the ground again, and Max holdings onto the fabric, his eyes closed. A serene smile on his lips.

And the city finally breathes again.

Loud cheers and applause set Jacob off his perch, and in an instant he’s by Max’s side, wrapping him in the quilt, then in his arms, the sinewy length of him. Then he kisses Max for the beauty of him and murmurs, hiding his face in Max’s neck, ‘I love you.’

Max chuckles over his ear, his arms closing around Jacob. ‘I love you, too. Next time, we ascend together.’

  


**Author's Note:**

> UPD 26.03.2018: I have decided to add some thinking that had led to this small fic.  
> The 19th century had given us a lot of interesting things brought by interesting people. One of them was Jules Léotard, an aerial acrobat. He developed the art of trapeze (and the one-piece article of clothing is named after him, he popularised it). Now, we know that Max was an acrobat, after the falling of his family troupe and before clawing a criminal reputation for himself that made Starrick notice him. What makes it interesting is that Jules Léotard's life approximately fits with Max's (at least the end of it: Léotard died in 1870 at the age of 32). Another fact of note is the first ever trapeze act performed by him (and by anyone ever) happened at the Alhambra. _The_ Alhambra, in 1859 (which would fit the story of Max's life, since he took command over the Blighters a few years later).  
>  In 1867, Jules was immortalised in a song that would be performed even years later, _The Daring Young Man On The Flying Trapeze_. It is one of the songs sung in AC:S. Moreover, in the game, there is a quartet not far from the Alhambra. They sing _The Daring Young Man_.  
>  Now, for this AU, I chose aerial silks. They would be developed a century after Léotard's art of trapeze, in 1959 in France. And for the purposes of this AU, we would fiddle with timeline a bit and imagine that it was Max who developed the art of aerial silks, lost his acrobatic life, and then got it back again when he meets a certain little crow.


End file.
